I met Maria Vladimirovna during her visit to Armenia. While she was surprisingly charming, that woman has a will of steel; you could almost feel inner strength radiating from her. Maria Vladimirovna is never going to let her hypothetical chances to ascend to the Imperial Throne diminish by allowing her son and heir marry an "inappropriate" candidate.

The marriage of George's parents was arranged to a certain extent. Both Maria and Franz Wilhelm are well-educated, intelligent people. No reason the same thing cannot happen with George and another royal. Once an heir arrives, they can both go do their own thing.

Who knows how serious George and Rebecca are though? He may have his heart set on her. Time will tell!

Assuming a marriage could be arranged with a woman of equal rank, what would be in it for her? She would already be of royal rank so status wouldn't be it, especially given the disputes within his own family. Money? I am not sure how much money Maria actually has as I have always been under the impression it was her half sister Helen who is the wealthy one. Becoming an Empress? Surely a modern young educated princess would not be that delusional. He may have a better chance as a HRH Prince of Prussia of finding a nice German aristocrat to marry, with fewer religious & rank restrictions on his choice, than as a pretender Grand Duke of Russia.

This scenario may be viewed as possible. Is Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna going to take a child and raise him/her as Elisabeth I of Russia did?

How disgusting; it would take a lot of work to end up finding someoen willing to have their own child ripped away from them and end up willingly tossed aside. That would take a tremendous amount of tolerance and a lack of natural motherly instinct.

That is the date when the picture was apparently taken; however, it was uploaded at the end of January, and the event title clearly states it was this year's fair. Someone likely forgot to set the correct date on their camera.

Anyways, the couple has been pictured together in a couple of recent issues of Point de Vue.

Furthermore, the couple may have known each other for awhile as Mr Bettarini was previously Ambassador to Luxembourg, where George was working before he moved to Brussels.

Here is a picture of her at an event in Naples in 2003, where he is not pictured, but he is listed on the organizing committee. So he should be in attendance. So they have probably known each other a long time.

If he gets serious, then I think that he would wreck his chances since there is no way that Russia would ever accept a Tsarina with no Russian blood, who would have an heir that would have near zero Russian blood in their veins.

I suspect it may already be serious if they are being open about it and it is in point de vue.

He may be in love and have given up on either finding a princess with russian blood who would be Russian orthodox, or the potential restoration of the monarchy, or both.

Maybe he has hit up every potential tsarina and been shot down miseably and has given up after over a decade of hitting his head against that brick wall.

Maybe he just does stuff with mama too make her happy.

Mama will be crushed.

What will Maria do now?

Either she can claim that rules are determined by the head of the royal house of Romanovs and she is changing the rules and uses her steely nerve to withstand the response from the other Romanovs; or she can hunt down Cecelia of Leningen and take her under her wing, groom her in Russian ways, and find her a prince.

Either she can claim that rules are determined by the head of the royal house of Romanovs and she is changing the rules...

She cannot change the rules.
Even if Maria Vladimirovna were universally accepted as the Head of the Imperial House (which she isn't), she would still be unable to amend any of the Imperial House Laws. To change any laws of the Russian Empire, there needs to be a Russian Empire in the first place; only then, through an Act of Parliament (Duma) could any of the laws be amended.

She should be glad if he is happy. She looks like a lovely girl. There is no throne, he is just another guy. Happiness is hard to find. To strangle it with caveats that are just unrealistic, is nonsense. Maria is a dreamer. She should make sure he son is happy, not sucked into some fantasy she hopes for.

I wonder if this is a sign that he is uninterested in being an official pretender; after all, a woman with not even aristocratic lineage with no Russian and no royal lineage would violate practically every single House Law, including that she is a Catholic, not an Orthodox Russian. There is no way that a "Grand Duke" Vladimir would be able to assert a right via a wife that has zero anything Russian about her. He isn't a prince that can end up just randomly choosing and making the subjects accept it.

She wouldn't be able to.
If Georgi marries a non-royal lady, he will lose his (debatable) status of a dynast. His children will certainly not be ones. As such, Maria Vladimirovna could still be a claimant to the Russian Throne, but her son will not be.

There isn't a single living person nowadays, Mria Vladimirovna and Prince Nicholas included, who comply with all Romanov Household rules. As such, if the Moanrchy were ever reinstated in Russia, and if it were decided that a representative or descendant of the House of Romanov should be invited to take the Throne, it will be more or less up to the Government and people of Russia who gets invited. But I will tell this: any of the current Romanovs has more chances than Maria Vladimirovna or Prince Georgi. Because of the existing tensions with Georgia and the historical ones with Germany, there is no way a half-Georgian and half-German will ever be considered for the position. Hell, Prince Michael of Kent has more chances than either of them!

Aristocat: the last Tsaritsa had no Russian blood in her veins at all; just German, and Nicholas II might have been Emperor of Russia, but he was also a German duke, which makes it easier to see Georgi as a German prince. That way, his lady friend wouldn't have to convert to Orthodoxy. Did anyone happen to notice in the latest picture of them Georgi had a gold ring on his RIGHT ring finger. It's a fact Russian Othodox wear their wedding rings on that finger. Maybe he is secretly married, or else it's Mom's ring.